Elevators serving the same corridors on a plurality of floors of a building are usually operated in groups (typically, four to eight per group). A group of elevators may serve all the floors in the building, or may serve contiguous sections of the building, as in a low rise group, a medium rise group, and a high rise group. A recent innovation utilized principally during morning up-peak traffic in a typical office building further divides the elevator service into subgroups of floors so as to provide faster overall service to large numbers of passengers traveling to the various floors from the lobby. In state-of-the-art elevators, the allocation of elevators within the group to specific floors of a subgroup is called channeling, and is described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,792,019; 4,804,069; 4,838,384; and 4,846,311; and in commonly owned U.S. patent application of Thangavelu, Ser. No. 07/957,569 filed on Apr. 21, 1990, and other U.S. patent applications cited therein. In such a system, each time an elevator car returns to the lobby it is assigned to the next subgroup, e.g., floors 2-6, and that fact is displayed to passengers in the corridor so that they can select the proper elevator car to enter. The next time that same elevator approaches the lobby, it may be assigned to floors of a different subgroup, e.g., floors 7-12. Again, the floors to which it is assigned are announced to passengers by an electronic display in the corridor, so they may enter the proper elevator.
In each case, car calls will be accepted only to the floors of the assigned subgroup. Thus, in the first instance, only the car call buttons for floors 2-6 are operative, the remaining car call buttons (e.g., floors 7-21) are not operative. However, persons have a habit of not paying much attention and getting on the wrong elevator; similarly, passengers who are visiting and entering the building during the rush hour are likely to forget the floor which they are visiting and seek to enter a call on the wrong floor. In order to accommodate this situation, state-of-the-art elevators may typically have an electronic display on the car operating panel near the car call buttons reminding passengers which subgroup of floors are being serviced at this time by this elevator. Such a display indicates the available floors until the elevator leaves the lobby, and then reverts to its usual task of designating the floor position of the elevator as it proceeds to and through the subgroup of floors. However, an electronic display capable of illustrating the floors currently being served is far more expensive than is necessary for a simple floor position indicator. Furthermore, in the rush of entering a crowded elevator (perhaps with a door starting to close and reopening), passengers frequently simply seek out a car call button and do not read any displays. In buildings demanding the highest quality of service, this sort of irritation may not be tolerable.
In a recent innovation, disclosed in a commonly owned, co-pending U.S. patent application entitled "Cyclically Varying Elevator Grouping", Ser. No. 07/887,946 filed on May 26, 1992 by Bittar, specially designed cars are capable of serving different rises of multi-rise elevator systems, having a low rise and high rise or a low rise, a medium rise, and a high rise. Thus, any such elevator car may be assigned during one run to handle passengers only within the low rise group, and may be assigned in another run to handle passengers in a medium rise group, etc. In some installations, it is possible that all of the car call buttons adjacent to a given door are only related to the floors served from the corridor onto which that door opens; that is, if entering from the lobby corridor serving the mid-rise, the panels adjacent the doors through which the passenger has entered contain only mid-rise car call buttons; if entering from a corridor serving passengers to a high rise, only car call buttons relating to the high rise floors will be found in the panels adjacent to the door through which the passenger has entered. On the other hand, it may be desirable for a variety of reasons to have all car call buttons, or more than one rise of car call buttons, adjacent to one or more of the doors of a swing car of the Bittar application. In such a case, the problems of identifying the car call buttons which may be utilized by the passengers, described hereinbefore with respect to channeling, are applicable to swing cars. A similar situation may exist in other swing car installations where a car may be operating in a simplex mode with respect to only certain of the floors of its normal group. A swing car elevator configuration of this type is disclosed in commonly owned co-pending U.S. patent application entitled "Elevator Car and Riser Transfer" Ser. No 07/853,678, filed on Mar. 19, 1992 by Meguerdichian et al now U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,287, issued Dec. 20, 1993. Another situation in which less than all of the floors relating to car call buttons on a car operating panel are available to passengers, or where hall calls might not be available to passengers, are in state-of-the-art elevator systems having selective security. Thus, a given floor or set of floors might be blocked out for security purposes, or service from a given floor may be allowed only in the down direction and not in the up direction. In these situations, it can be extremely frustrating if there is no indication to potential passengers of the availability or not of the service which may be requested by pressing a call button. A security system of this general type is illustrated in a commonly owned, co-pending U.S. patent application entitled "Adaptive Elevator Security System", Ser. No. 07/785,738 filed on Oct. 31, 1991 by Kupersmith et al now U.S. Pat. No. 5,200,583, issued Apr. 6, 1993.
An elevator hall lantern for distinctively announcing the arrival of up-travelling and down-travelling cars at a floor, capable of displaying distinctive up and down direction indications from a single, common display area employing dual lights, is disclosed in commonly owned, co-pending U.S. patent application entitled "Single, Bi-Color Elevator Hall Enunciator Lantern" Ser. No. 07/937,094, filed on Aug. 31, 1992 by Proctor. All of the foregoing patents and applications are incorporated herein by reference.